Pleased with Debian Server

[Das Goravani]

So I made a Debian based VPS lately. Got it fully working with the App Server. 
Which included setting up Apache, Postgres, PHP
In this I completely followed the advice of Mats (Adjoin). I’m glad I did, it worked out well.

This is my first experience with Linux, and the command line as a way of operating a computer. 

It went well, with help it was relatively easy. 

The server aspects are working beautifully. They stay UP. Postgres stays working, the server stays working. Basic, I know, but pleasing when you first encounter their ways of staying up so well. 

I am really pleased with the experience and the result. 

For about $10 a month I have this server working. Actually what it will be doing is hosting my database programming demo. My website about my programming services, and a JS client demo that shows what I can do with Omnis. 

I’m really happy with the results of this endeavor. 

Had I known you can have a server for that cheap, that can do so much, I never would have bought my Mac Server some year plus ago. I wanted to get into "servers" and just didn’t know much at the time. 

It’s amazing how much you can do with the command line. It’s nearly everything. I must admit however, that I installed WebMin, a dashboard type application that works through a web interface to your server, and gives you a GUI way of dealing with it’s files.. it gives you a GUI view of all your directories and files on your Linux server, and allows you to edit them, via the GUI, in a visual way, with windows, menus, buttons.. as if you have a GUI on your Linux server.. it’s nice.. you end up doing a lot with WebMin. Very key is the fact that it lets you drag and drop to upload files to the server.. for uploading web pages, application updates, etc. 

It was painless to put my site on their in the right Apache folder so that it gets hosted. Since the server has it’s own IP I just pointed DNS at it and that was done. The site is now on the WWW… hosted as it were for "free".. sure there’s the server cost per month, but that’s low compared to what you pay say GoDaddy for hosting a site. 

Now only if I could find out the right mail server to install, based heavily on which one is most painless to set up.. does any of them have a web based GUI that allows you to configure it on top of Debian Linux. That would be key. If I had a mail server on the Debian I would be tempted to switch to it for all my server needs- my other sites and my mail. If you know of a Linux mail server that fits what I said please do tell me which one it is please. 

I can completely see why Andy and others told me you don’t need a GUI on top of Linux.. that you can do most everything through the command line.. I can see that now. 

I know what I am saying is real basic to a lot of you. I’m just writing to air my head out… to say what’s on my mind. There may not be a soul who benefits from this, or there may be.. I don’t know. Seems like it’s all real PROS on here.. from the responses that are posted. 

I had a lot of fear around doing this whole server endeavor. I even made a Windows server alongside the Debian just in case Linux proved to be too much for me. The words of those who failed at it affected me. But I succeeded. I’m glad. Linux is really clean and it really works. With minimum resources too.. my server has only 1 core, only 2 GB of memory, and only 25 GB of hard disk space. Low low standards by what I’m used to on say my LapTop, which has such larger specifications. The Debian is lean.. but runs perfectly fast and well. 

The point of it was to learn how to do it firstly, so that I can do it for clients in the future. Then secondly it hosts my demo, for client prospects to look at to see what I can do.. and then thirdly it may host my other websites and mail in the future. I imagine it can do all of this on it’s lean specifications.. which is really pleasing and amazing. 

If you want to see what I’m putting together as an Omnis demo you can visit my site dasgoravani.com <http://dasgoravani.com/> and click one of the buttons at the bottom of the page.. the buttons take you into the App Server and my JS Client demo app which is four pages. You have to have your browser page at the largest it can go on your viewing computer.. like the full size of a Mac 15 inch Retina display.. 1600 pixels wide you need.. I made full size pages.. to show that can be done.. they will not appear correctly if you have your browser window smaller than 1600 pixels. So go wide if you’re going to look. 

I used Omnis’ demos to make my demo.. they have many libraries you can download from the Javascript demo Omnis site.. I downloaded many and included their Remote forms in sub forms on my pages. That worked out great. There were very few bugs. The ones that did appear were easy to work out. Omnis made their demos self contained which is nice.. they simply work straight away when you put them into sub forms on a form.. pretty much they work straight away. They have text on them meant for programmers.. talking to you the developer about what the demo does.. I am changing all that as I have time to be more text meant for prospective business clients. That will be more appropriate. That’s what I’m doing today. 

Also included on the demo site is my own part, which is two things.. one is a worldwide cities finder.. that demo’s the speed of looking up cities from a database of 1.8 million records. And it’s fast. The other part that’s "mine" is the translation demo… to show that I can translate for the customer facing side of their app.. thanks to Graham Stevens for the original translation demo. I couldn’t have done it without his work. Thanks Graham. I’m taking your demo all the way.. in my various works. 

I just deleted the Windows server that I setup alongside the Debian.. I won’t be needing the Windows server. Happy about that.